


Destiny’s Chains

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Feral Emerys, Getting Back Together, Known magic, M/M, Past Mpreg, magic restraints, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-08-23 14:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16620581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: His sword flies from its sheath and Arthur grabs it by the hilt. It is balanced against Emerys’ neck. “You can kill me now, you can deny all of this, everything. Let the knights believe this mad quest of yours was a power struggle. An attempt to quell the forces of magic and to bind them to yourself. Let our dreamscape promise of Albion die with me. Or you can lower your sword, say my name. Offer me my place in your court and watch as we bring Camelot into the golden age.”Arthur digs the sword into the wound from earlier, watches the red pearls gather. He feels sturdy, sure. The tremors he expected in his hands do not come, as if he has already made his decision. Emerys stands just as tall, no fear in his eyes. All the magic in the world, Arthur thinks, gathered in his palms, and yet he allows himself to be marred by mere steel. Everything he is, everything he has ever hoped to achieve is balanced on the end of this sword, and dipped in red.





	Destiny’s Chains

 

The guards throw the man at Arthur’s feet. He’s a little disappointed that it’s so early in the morning, that his uncle isn’t up to see his great achievement. But he supposes it gives him more time to savor this, rather than rushing to the end.

The man lets out a wail when his knees hit the stones and his eyes fluctuate between a murky gold and a clear blue. Arthur thinks it must be the suppressed magic in him.

“Does it hurt?” Arthur grabs the wild man by his dark hair, grimacing at the greasy, matted mess. He forces him to look up at Arthur, blue eyes challenging empty eyes. He snaps his fingers a few times and the man eventually manages to focus on him. “Does it hurt? The magic contained in you?”

The man groans. His chest heaves and there’s spit gathering at the corner of his lips.

Arthur grins. “Yes, they told me it might. That one so powerful as you couldn’t handle it. That having it trapped in your rib cage might drive you mad. One of the druids who helped make your bindings said it would be like ‘having an entire forest bursting to life’ inside of you.”  Arthur cocks his head to the side. “So poetically put. Doesn’t really sound all that awful to me.” He shrugs and releases the man’s face. “Then again, I don’t know what magic feels like so who is to say.”

He turns his back and walks towards his chair, grand and high backed. He runs his hand over the wood, fingers curled around the dragon carved into it. “So, tell me friend. Where is the one you call ‘Emerys’?”

The man groans again, coughs ones. He mutters something that Arthur can’t quite understand.

“You’ll have to speak up.”

“‘M not your friend.”  The guy arches suddenly, shoves his face against the floor, and Arthur can almost see the way his spine contorts, like it’s being pushed against his skin. Pushed through his skin. The sight makes Arthur a little nauseated, but he pushes through.

“No, I don’t suppose you are. But the question still remains,  _ where is Emerys  _ ?”

The man laughs, though it’s more of a garbled, wet noise than amusement. “Do not act as if you do not already know that answer, King.”

Arthur does not respond. He just continues to watch the man’s skin ripple over brittle bones.

Blue eyes cracked through with gold find Arthur’s eyes. They stare each other down and then the man coughs. When he speaks again his voice is rough. Heavy, like a smokers. “Do not, King, pretend you haven’t known since they brought me through those doors.”

Arthur shivers and he bites the inside of his cheek in annoyance. But the sorcerer is right. Arthur knew. “Tell me, how did they capture you? You’re mostly unharmed."

He can see some of his knights shift. It could be guilt or nerves. It could be that they are confused by the casualness of the conversation. The sorcerer rolls his shoulders, and everything about him rolls in the movement. His skin ripples disgustingly, like it might slough off of him if he shifts the wrong way. Like his bones might dissolve beneath the weight of his oppressed magic.

Leon speaks, when the sorcerer does not. “There was,” he hesitates. “There was a child. A boy, and Agravaine wanted to,” again he pauses, gauging his king’s mood.

Arthur raises a hand. He steps towards his throne turning his back on the crowds behind him. “Are you telling me,” he runs his fingers over the rough hewn wood, tracing the spines of the carved dragon. “Are you telling me that you managed to capture the great Emerys simply by pointing a sword at a child?”

He drags a nail over the wood grimacing at the filth it leaves under it. “Two decades, this man has been hunted throughout the five kingdoms. He could not be caught as a child, pierced through the hip by a bolt. Nor could he be caught as a teen caring for an ailing mother, a sickly uncle. And yet, as a man with all the power in the world at his fingertips, you bound him without a fight over a child?”

No one answers, no one moves. Arthur turns on his men storms across the room and drags the  _ mighty  _ Emerys up. “You’re telling me in all this time it was so simple to subdue you?”

Emerys smiles at Arthur. “Would that someone had done so for all the children harmed under Camelot’s banners.” His eyes soften, even as the blue and gold burn each other out, leaving a grey fog behind. “Would that someone had sunk to their knees for you, King.”

“Shut up.” Arthur hisses. “Keep quiet on things you know nothing about.”

Emerys does not keep silent. “Do they still ache, King? The lines on your back? Do you still feel them? The ridges on your thighs? Do they still burn, those holes in your shoulders?”

“How do you know?” Arthur wants there to be venom in his voice. He wants the malice and the poison his father once wielded to curl around his tongue, bleed between his teeth. But his voice comes out quiet and afraid. Childish in a way that shames him, burns beneath the collar of his tunic.

Emerys gives him a weak smile that is clenched teach of foaming spit. He leans as close as his bindings will allow him, as much as the ache in his body gives him room to. He holds Arthur’s eyes, the gold holding fast for a moment. “Because, my King. I was  _ there  _ .”

Arthur shoves him away, watches his head crack against the stone. He draws his sword and lets it rest in the hollow of Emerys’ neck. “I am not your king, Emerys.”

Emerys sighs. “You have always been my king. Since the day you were born and I fled your father’s chains, you have been my king.”

Arthur presses his sword into the flesh, watches the first drops of red pearl against pale flesh. “You have defied Camelot’s laws for two decades, Emerys. You’ve made a mockery of my rules with your tricks and your spells. And yet you say I am your king?”

Emerys shifts, arches his back and writhes. For a moment Arthur is afraid the magic is going to explode out of him, that it is going to bend him in half and break him. But then he slumps back against the stone floor, curled on his side, his eyes rolling towards Arthur.

“Camelot has seen no harm since you took the throne. Has flourished and prospered under your rule. And yet you still hunt me. You burn my people in search of me. Tell me, Arthur, what have I ever done to you? What plagues have brought upon your head?” He groans suddenly, curls in tighter on himself and twitches. “Tell me, my king, why do you seek Emerys. Do you even know?”

“Leave us.”  He doesn’t mean to give the command, but once he has spoken he cannot find it in him to regret the words. “Now.”

“Sire,”  Elyane steps forward, concern heavy in his voice. Arthur raises a hand, allows for no argument.

When they are alone he sheaths his sword and takes his place on his throne. “There is a prophecy.”

Emerys shudders on the floor in front of him. Something ill rolls down Arthur’s spine, but he ignores it. “A prophecy that drove my father mad.”

“Your father,”  Emerys pants, “went mad long before he heard the dragon speak.”

“So you know of it then. Of our grand destiny?” Arthur steeples his fingers together and studies the banner to his left. The gold in it is fade, much like the gold dying under Emerys’ tar-colored lashes.

Emerys looks younger than Arthur expected, beneath the grime. There are laugh lines around his eyes but his skin is smooth, lightly freckled. “If I unbind you, what will you do?”

He doesn’t answer. Arthur can see the way his chest heaves, and if he looks hard enough he can count the beats of his heart through the skin of his neck. “Will you kill me?”

Emerys manages to look at him for a moment, but there is no clarity in his eyes. “Because I think I would have kill you that night, given the opportunity.” 

 

Arthur climbs off his throne and removes the keys at his waist. He undoes the shackles. The metal is surprisingly cold in his hands. So cold it burns and he grimaces. When he touches Emerys’ wrist though, he’s surprised at the heat. “Why did you run for so long, Emerys? Why did you not come to me? Are you afraid of your destiny?”

The sorcerer has stilled on the stone floor, his chest a steady rise and fall. Arthur pulls his handkerchief out and wipes the blood and spit from around his mouth, wipes some of the muck from his face.

They sit in silence for a long time. Arthur allows Emerys to come back to himself, helps him to sit up. “Tell me, Emerys. What was the name of your birth? Before destiny christened you?”

Emerys blinks at him, and Arthur can see the strain and exhaustion in eyes that were once blue. “Names how power. Power you seem not to understand, throwing yours around so freely.”

“I know your name in the tongue of magic. A name far more powerful than one from the tongue of men.”

“The name from my mother can break me, if wielded with power.”

Arthur snorts. “That makes no sense, Emerys.”

Emerys manages to push himself up into a sitting position, though his arms shake with the effort. “Why do you want to know the name of my birth?”

“Because you know mine.”  

“Does it matter so much to you?”

Arthur shrugs. “I could strike you dead for the crime you commit by breathing. You would die a legend amongst the druid but a man forgotten. Does it not bother you?”

Beside him, the man sighs. “I would die happy, to be forgotten by the druids and by you. I never asked destiny to pick me, Arthur. I did not beg for the power you fought so hard for.”

Arthur sneers at him. “And yet the gods bestowed it on you. They charged you with a kingdom’s protection and you fled.”

“Is that why you hate me? Because you think I was not here to save you?”

“I know you weren’t.”

“You know nothing, Arthur Pendragon. Nothing, because you allow yourself to remain blind to everything around you. You ask me the name of my birth as if it were not written in every dream you have ever had. You send your men to slay my people as if they were not also your own. You would have murdered my son, as if you were not the one to gift him to me.” Emerys is in his face, hissing bitter as he speaks.

“Shut up. You speak lies and blasphemy.” Arthur tries to maintain his dominance, tries not to cower at the rage before him. “Those  _ dreams  _ were the work of vile magic. Even now you taunt me, play tricks on my mind.”

“Say my name, Arthur.”

“Silence! I will not allow you to beguile me.”  Arthur tries to stand, but Emerys grips his wrist tight, surprisingly strong for one previously so shatters.

“Whisper it the way you did that night, when I came to your bedroom. Speak it as gently as you did the night Uther died.”

Arthur struggles against the hold and looks to the door ready to call for his knights, but Emerys shoves and twist until he has the king pinned beneath his thighs. “Scream it the way you did when the world cracked open and you saw all that Albion could be.”

“  _ I should have murdered you that night,”  _ Arthur sneers.

“Instead you took me to your bed. And then you banished me from your kingdom. Ask me, O King, how old the boy they threatened was.”

Arthur’s eyes widen. “No. It cannot be.”

“Ask me what you gave me that night, what you would take away from me now.”

“You lie, like you did it my dreams when you offered me safety.”

“Ask me what would make me turn my back on destiny. On the on my people. Ask my why I turned away from you and Albion and all it could be.”

Arthur fights against him then, uses all of his strength to shove at the sorcerer. “Ask my now, Arthur, why I left you and your kingdom to rot.”

“Why did you allow yourself to be caught?”

Emerys screams then, and it is a sound so broken and so angry that the very walls around them groan. “Ask me his name.”

“  _ His?” _

The fight drips out of both of them. “You have a son Arthur, and a choice to make.”

His sword flies from its sheath and Arthur grabs it by the hilt. It is balanced against Emerys’ neck. “You can kill me now, you can deny all of this, everything. Let the knights believe this mad quest of yours was a power struggle. An attempt to quell the forces of magic and to bind them to yourself. Let our dreamscape promise of Albion die with me. Or you can lower your sword, say my name. Offer me my place in your court and watch as we bring Camelot into the golden age.”

Arthur digs the sword into the wound from earlier, watches the red pearls gather. He feels sturdy, sure. The tremors he expected in his hands do not come, as if he has already made his decision. Emerys stands just as tall, no fear in his eyes. All the magic in the world, Arthur thinks, gathered in his palms, and yet he allows himself to be marred by mere steel. Everything he is, everything he has ever hoped to achieve is balanced on the end of this sword, and dipped in red.

“You have one question, Arthur, one opportunity to forge a new future. What do you choose?”

Arthur breathes in deeply. Taste his breath, coppery and stale, and feels the weight of it in his chest. “Would you really leave our son without his father, Merlin?”

Arthur watches as the dark haired male sinks to his knees, hears the sob echo around the room. He drops his sword and sinks beside him, gathers him in his arm. “Would you abandon the boy the way your father abandoned you?”

Merlin shakes his head against Arthur’s shoulder. “I knew you’d make the right choice.”

“What is his name?”

“Mordred.” Merlin’s tears are wet against his shoulder and then his neck when he turns. “Why did you act as though you did not know me? As if you did not remember all  the times I did what I could for you?”

Arthur runs a hand through greasy hair. “Because you left me Merlin, so I burned every trace of you from my life. Had they never found you I might have truly forgotten everything you were to me.”

“And yet you hunted me across the kingdoms.”

“You took everything good in me with you. I needed it back.”

"You sent me away."

"I was afraid. The weight of you and me, of destiny, of a kingdom dumped on my shoulders." 

Merlin finally looks at him. "I would have carried it with you, Arthur."

"And now?"

"And now we are different people. I do not know how we fit together. If we even do anymore."

Arthur nods, and then squares his shoulders. "Can I meet him? My son?" 

Merlin frowns, chews the inside of his cheek. "Will you bind him in chains, hold a sword to his throat?"

"I will protect him. With my life should it come to that."

Merlin doesn't answer him, but Arthur can see in his eyes the hope.

"Tomorrow then. We ride for him tomorrow."

 


End file.
